


home comforts

by agentmaine



Series: touch and comfort [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, at this point dont even ask when this is set in canon. i dont know. im just vibing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23322061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmaine/pseuds/agentmaine
Summary: “You okay, love?” He asks, every time, routine. Jon remembers each time that Martin told him how in their stage of unspoken something, each touch from Jon killed him, a bit. It’s in that moment, each time, that Jon truly understands what he means.or, a look at jon's feelings for martin, and the comfort he brings.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: touch and comfort [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677190
Comments: 11
Kudos: 164





	home comforts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [choose_joy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/choose_joy/gifts).



He’s not used to this. Not sure if he ever will be, either, nor is he sure if he’ll get the chance to, to begin with. But even if he had all the time in the universe, that great, neverending expanse, Jon isn’t sure if he’d grow accustomed to this feeling. _This_ _feeling_ , he calls it, because he can’t quite place it. Love, maybe? But not just that - something else, something deeper. It’s not safety - he knows he can’t count on anything to make him feel safe anymore, truly safe, because they are well past that point. They’re so far past it that it feels more like a distant memory than a feasible goal to strive towards or something to want for. He thinks that, maybe, he was past the point of ever feeling any _real_ sense of safety again the first time he felt that certainty of death, the fear so sharp it could cut through bone, so cold that it freezes the breath in his lungs, making his chest feel like a solid block of ice, so palpable that he’s prayed to a God he doesn’t believe in for respite.

It’s not _safety_ that Martin makes him feel, but it’s the closest he ever gets, these days. It took a long while and it’s fair to say that he’s the one to blame for that, his arrogance and ignorance and paranoia causing so much friction between them. Or, well, not just them - between Jon and the rest of the world. For a long while, he had walls built up so high he couldn’t even begin to dismantle them, at first to protect himself, then under misguided pretences as to protect others. And, if he’s feeling honest with himself, even in the time before all of that - if he were to put it plainly? He was an arsehole, for no reason at all, even when he knew that Martin was being nothing but a friend to him. He regrets it now, of course. Has tried to say so many times, as hard as apologies are.

Martin, being how he is, just smiles with a shake of his head and tells him, “the past is the past.”

Jon doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to how kind Martin is to him, either, even if that’s been a constant in all the years they’ve known each other. Though, he thinks, maybe he _is_ used to it - he just feels, deep down, tucked away where all of his insecurities fester, he doesn’t quite deserve it. He tries to, though. He tries to deserve what Martin gives him.

What Martin gives him, he thinks, isn’t safety. It’s _comfort_.

He knows Martin’s _love language_ , if that’s what he must call it (it is, Martin has argued, waving the _5 Love Languages_ book he purchased at some charity shop about as if it’s the newest edition of the Bible) is physical touch. He knows Martin loves it, always has. When they were still unspoken, when there was a definite _them_ but no confirmation of it other than a shared want, those little touches had brought them both more comfort than either would admit. They were stolen moments, stolen touches as a second of reprieve against whatever storm they were in the middle of battling. They were almost embarrassingly chaste, the quick touches of forbidden lovers and God help him, he has to laugh at it.

For the longest time, the most intimacy he had with Martin was being passed cups of tea across a desk. But it always meant more than that, didn’t it? It was never _just_ tea, just like how it was never _just_ being woken up hours after he should have left work, never _just_ Martin’s hand on his back to wake him. Behind it all was comfort, always there, like the reassuring glow of a candle against the night sky, small and not enough to fight back everything around it, but enough to try and do a damned good job of making the dark just a little bit less… lonely. Everything Martin did was nervously calculated to provide just the right amount of presence, always walking the fine line of Jon’s temperament between seeming too close and too distant and any supposed “failings” were more due to Jon’s own curt nature, he admits, rather than anything Martin did wrong.

Jon really does struggle to think of anything of significance that Martin has done wrong by him. Any attempts to come up with something fall short. Martin is good, always has been good, and Jon knows that he is _lucky_ , lucky beyond words to have that in his life throughout all of this. Knows now that this is something he needs, much more than he has the vocabulary to admit. Luckily, talking is neither of their strong suits - as is obvious, he reckons, to anyone who managed to overhear their horrendous attempts at communication, attempts to show they care in words. It had always come out like word soup, spaghetti letters chucked at a wall miserably, both of them dancing around meanings, words tumbling out in near nonsensical order, impossible to be deciphered over all the damned stuttering.

It’s awful, really. They were no better than teenage girls passing notes along the corridor, Jon reminices, and it brings a smile to his face.

Words don’t work, but touch does. Not in _that_ way, a lot of the time, because Jon… doesn’t, most of the time. Though, Martin has always joked, if their courtship started with a brush of fingers over the reassuring warmth of a mug of tea, even as much as a hug is their equivalent of fifth base. 

(The first time he made that joke, Jon had blushed so furiously that Martin had laughed for ten minutes, only extended by Jon hitting him with a tea towel.)

The touches they share are, luckily, no longer brief and stolen. They’re allowed to linger, take their time, cement themselves into reality. It isn’t just a case of Jon seeing that this makes Martin happy, no - he can practically _feel_ the joy this brings out in Martin, an overwhelmingly cheesy smile, and although somewhat reluctant to admit it, Jon knows the smile is mirrored on his own face, too. They spend a lot more of their time together now, revelling in the feeling of fresh air, air that feels real and crisp and made for humans to take in, rather than the stale and suffocating air of the Archives that is inhaled like lead, a slow poisoning. Jon revels in being _Jon,_ not just The Archivist.

Sometimes he’s _love_ , too, to Martin. It brings about a sparkling warmth under his skin, a tingling that’s at once embarrassing and wonderful and he wouldn’t trade it for anything, this forbidden domesticity in amongst the end of the world. He knows Martin would do anything for him - they’ve had that pointed out to them by others who would use it as a weakness. Jon knows he’d do the same right back for Martin, knows he’d go as far as the ends of the Earth and then somehow further, and views it as a strength. Hopes that it is the one thing that can’t be taken from him.

When they can, in their moments at home - Martin’s apartment, mainly, because although it’s messy and less than homely and cramped and very symptomatic of living near London, it’s nowhere near as bad as the hoarder’s den that is Jon’s apartment - they sit in those moments of comfort, of touch. 

Martin’s touch and comfort are synonymous, at this point.

Martin will cook - or more accurately, he’ll heat up leftovers and put ready meals in the oven - and as Jon passes him in the kitchen, he revels in the opportunity to put his hand on the small of Martin’s back. When they share meals over Martin’s all too small dinner table, Martin will rest his foot against Jon’s, their legs pressed together, a pressure so natural that sometimes Jon feels like he’s missing a leg when Martin stands up to do the dishes. On night’s when it’s “Jon’s turn”, and by that he means nights where he insists Martin let him do _something_ useful, he’ll stand at the sink, enjoying the feeling of warm, soapy water up to his elbows as he scrubs the dishes. It’s somehow both a routine and a surprise when each time, a few minutes before he finishes, Martin will stand behind him, wrap his arms around his middle, body pressed to his back, and rest his head heavy on Jon’s shoulder.

Jon always does the last few dishes slower, after that. Martin undoubtedly notices - it doesn’t take five minutes to wash a pot, but he doesn’t say anything. He lets himself soak in the warmth of the water, the warmth of Martin, the warmth of the flickering, dingy, yellow kitchen light that undoubtedly makes him look sickeningly tired, the warmth of the domesticity. The warmth of what they have, not what they _could_ have, for once, because even though their alarms will sound them awake the next morning and they’ll get on the underground, ride the tube to the madness that has taken over their lives, sometimes to stay in the Institute for up to a week at a time, in Martin’s home ( _their home,_ Martin would correct him, gently), none of that can touch them.

In their home, they’re just… people. They’re just _them._

When they sit in the living room together, on the second-hand sofa of cracked brown faux leather, comfort comes not from the apartment itself - admittedly a bit of a shithole - but from the proximity to Martin that Jon finds himself in. Martin, taller and broader and larger than him in all the right ways that make Jon feel sheltered against a storm, arm around his shoulders as if it isn’t world-endingly wonderful, devastatingly gentle, a move so affectionate and colossal that a mere few months ago it would have seemed insane to them. Martin, chuckling half-heartedly at the shows he puts on, the normality of watching The Chase and reruns of Bake Off from before it moved to ITV, Martin insists, rather than watching new seasons, the guilty pleasure of watching trash TV like Gogglebox, Martin commentating on the shows as if he’s a cast member himself, it feels almost selfish.

Ridiculous, really. If anyone deserves a moment’s peace, it’s them, Jon works to remind himself.

He takes what he can, selfishly. He takes the feeling of Martin’s arm around his shoulders, the smell of his cheap cologne that he wears to feel fit for work, the smell of the candles they have burning, always, to make the place at least a bit more homely. Jon doesn’t mind the candles, thinks they’re nice, but a ditch in a forest could be home enough for him if he were with Martin, he’s come to realise.

He doesn’t say that, of course. He tries to show it - presses closer into Martin’s side whenever the opportunity presents itself, makes the effort to cook when trusted to, although that’s not often, for both of their health. He does what he can to make Martin know he’s loved, a quiet show of dedication to his well being, actions and touches that say _I love you_ clearer than he can say aloud, most days. Sometimes it’s easier than others to say it, a “ _love you, bye!_ ” slipping out on the way to the shops or to work, but that doesn’t ease the fear. He’s not scared to say it for fear of the truth of it - he loves Martin like he needs to breathe, like water is wet, like the grass is green. He’s not scared that Martin doesn’t feel the same, he’d have to be blind to even consider that. He’s scared because verbalising it feels like giving someone the power to use it against him, weaponizing the thing in his life most precious to him, closest to his heart.

So, often, it’s said silently. Just like it used to be - in a hand on the back unnecessarily when stepping past him, in cups of tea handed over desks, in being woken up from nightmares. It’s the same, just ever so slightly different. In their home, the _I love you_ often finds itself living in reminders of “ _we best be getting to bed_ , _Martin”_ the very moment Martin starts to yawn, before he can stifle it, even though Jon would easily stay up five more hours if he were alone.

The comfort from Martin flows through the rooms in that place. It’s built into the walls, the cracks in the pastering, the splinters in the old doors. Even when Jon goes about his business on his own, the trail of evidence proving Martin was here, okay, alive, at home, brings comfort like an echo of a familiar song. It’s like looking at animal footprints in the fresh snow to track them, Jon thinks, on mornings where Martin has left before him. In their room, the messy duvet, sometimes still slightly warm from his sleeping body, always rustled from how he turns in his sleep. The glass of water or the cup of tea left on Jon’s bedside table, for when he wakes up - a quiet _I love you, good morning, be safe._ The stray slippers by the door, from where he swapped into work shoes. The smudges of toothpaste still left on the sink. The radio left playing quietly in the kitchen, because they’ve both come to hate the silence of being alone. Each is a small puzzle piece of his morning routine that Jon can follow easily, imagining him performing each routine step in perfect clarity both from witnessing it time and time again, and from knowing him well enough to recognise just from how haphazardly the slippers are planted by the doorway if he was in a rush or not.

No comfort, though, compares to that of their bedroom. As always, it’s not the nicest of places - a cheap ikea bed, a few plants just on the wrong edge of worse for wear, stray books of poetry scattered across a dusty shelf housing other little nick nacks. A desk for working, more often used for writing and hosting Martin’s half-filled journals to show for it, adorned with a few photos of happy memories - Tim and Sasha, and Jon doesn’t pretend it doesn’t hurt - as well as a lamp purposefully the spitting image of the one from Pixar introductions. There’s a sad excuse for a window crammed in the top left corner, filtering in the smallest rays of sunlight that somehow make it past the concrete skyscraper of an apartment block opposite Martin’s, but Martin doesn’t complain about it.

In fact, he takes the opportunity to blame _that_ for his half dead plants, not the lack of water he feeds them, but Jon digresses.

Their bed has become akin to a safehouse for Jon, first and foremost from the simple fact that it could be considered armoured from how decorated it is. Jon remembers the first time he saw it -

“Jesus, Martin.” He had quipped, smiling but incredulous. “How many throw pillows does one man need?”

“I don’t know.” Martin had laughed, light and soft and so new, then, that it had only added to the nerves in his stomach at being at his _home_ , making him _laugh._ “According to what I just counted, twelve. As well as three blankets.”

“Christ.” Jon had breathed out, still smiling. “Pick this up in an issue of _Us Weekly_ , did you?”

Martin had only laughed more, sitting down onto the bed, taking Jon’s hand in his own and tugging him over lightly, a reassuring tug of permission that _it’s okay_ , _you can be here_. “No chance. I can be classy, too, Mr. Big Shot University - I got the idea from the John Lewis magazine, no less. Stick that one in your pipe and smoke it.”

“I’ll be sure to.” Jon had responded, and he remembers the distinct feeling of breathlessness, air sucked out of his lungs, as Martin had led him down ever-so-gently into a chaste kiss, a _welcome home_.

Jon feels a similar sort of breathlessness still, looking at a room that is theirs. It’s not anxiety, not nerves, but breathlessness borne from sheer appreciation and shock that he’s allowed this, that he’s somehow been given this, despite everything. He tries not to focus on that, though, not here. Paradoxical, maybe, that the safest space in his world is the one that brings the most fear, the fear of loss, the fear of anything happening to it. But he pushes through, pushes that down, traps it in the back of his mind to let himself have this one thing.

To let Martin bring him the comfort he needs.

Martin is a heavy sleeper, wonderfully so, and he is beautiful. Those are facts that Jon observes on a nightly basis, almost, when stress keeps him awake, tossing and turning. Or, well, he _would_ toss and turn, he used to, when he slept alone, and would continue to if not for Martin’s arms wrapped around him, protective even in the depths of sleep. The comfort from Martin sleeping next to him is enough to soothe him, but not enough to halt the thoughts circling in his mind like a car travelling a neverending roundabout, forever searching for an exit.

Still, Martin provides a good distraction.

Jon acts selfishly, takes in what he can when Martin sleeps, looks at the curls of his hair, the slope of his nose, the roundness of his cheeks. Looks at his lips, slightly parted as his face is pressed against a pillow. Listens to that wonderfully soft, rhythmic breathing, a constant reassurance of life. He looks at Martin’s shirt, whatever top he’s decided is no longer fit for day-to-day wear and has been retired to pyjama status, finds himself unfairly endeared to old band shirts, shirts with phrases and logos likely alluding to more pop culture that Martin has likely nagged at him to watch, saying any reasonable person alive from1990 onwards would understand it. He lets himself be held close, protected. He lets Martin readjust so that Jon’s head rests on his chest, listens to the thumping of his heart.

He doesn’t say it, but he likes it best, perhaps, when he gets to be the little spoon. He’d rather die than admit something so horrendously sappy, but when he falls asleep to the feeling of arms around him, the feeling of a body aligned with and encompassing his own, when he recognises that body as Martin’s, the familiar smell of him, the familiar curves, the familiar softness; there is no time in the world where he feels as comforted, as close to safe as he is then.

It’s hard to frame waking up or going to sleep as peaceful times in his life, not when both bring about the coming of a new day at the Archives. Jon, instead, finds comfort in the middle of the night, the rare occasions when they’re both awake at times untouched by most people. Another thing he wouldn’t admit is that there are times where, maybe, Jon moves in a way that nudges Martin awake, or he makes a bit more noise making a trip to the bathroom than is necessary, not entirely unintentionally.

Jon knows, deep down, that Martin knows. He feels embarrassed at that, somewhat, but ignores it as much as is possible. He knows Martin understands - knows he knows that it’s an _I need you, please_ , in as many words as Jon is capable of.

Jon thinks of those times, the middle of the night’s comforts, when things are hard. When Jon comes back from the bathroom, swamped in another of Martin’s shirts, always a long-sleeved one, wrapping it around himself closer, his own blanket, Martin is often awake, leaning up on one arm, sometimes with one of the candles at their bedside relit. He’ll smile the same smile every time, always happy to help, always wanting to do right by him, in a way that empties Jon’s chest again, breathlessness returning.

“You okay, love?” He asks, every time, routine. Jon remembers each time that Martin told him how in their stage of unspoken something, each touch from Jon killed him, a bit. It’s in that moment, each time, that Jon truly understands what he means.

Jon nods, sometimes wordless, sometimes explaining briefly what woke him. A nightmare, usually. Martin would nod right back, curls unruly from sleep, and Jon remembers most clearly the times that one falls in front of his eyes. “Come back to bed, then.” Martin says, or something along the lines of that. “‘S cold without you.”

When Jon climbs back into bed, it’s less so the bed that he climbs into, and more so directly back into Martin’s arms, which always welcome him as if he’s been missing for months rather than minutes. Comfort comes then from knowing he was missed. Comfort follows further in the kiss he’s given upon settling down, lazy and gentle, followed by one to his forehead, nose, cheek. A hand runs through his hair if it’s down, unties it and then proceeds to do so if it’s in it’s signature bun. Jon often ties his hair up as much for the process of Martin untying and detangling it in the evening as he does for the convenience of it being out of his face during the day. Martin usually chats to him, then, half-asleep pleasantries about everything and nothing at all - the weather, a cafe he went to, a dog he saw, the newest episode of Countryfile, their plans for food for the next night, a dream he was having.

(Jon doubts his dreams are as nice as Martin tells him they are, but he doesn’t want to bring reality into their time, not yet, not when he so carefully avoids clocks just so he can keep them away in their bubble, kept apart from the gripping hands of the world, the demands of time, the reality that time brings into their little world.)

Jon remembers one time, specifically, when Martin had been talking about a dream he’d had in the run-up to Christmas, smiling almost dreamily in his half-conscious, joyful stupor, his face half buried into Jon’s hair and the pillow. “We… should buy, a, uh,” he had mumbled, yawning. “Should buy a new Christmas tree.”

Jon had hummed in response, trailing patterns into Martin’s arm, connecting the freckles as if he were making his own constellations. 

“Gonna be a merry one, this year.” Another yawn had followed, as if punctuating his sentences. He moved his head back to look at Jon, smiling with such softness, sincerity, comfort. The smell of the candle’s sweet vanilla couldn’t hope to compare. “I’ve got a feeling.”

Jon had cupped Martin’s face in his hand, lightly, smiling as Martin leaned into it, practically nuzzling into it with affection unburdened by the anxiety that full consciousness brings. “What’s your reasoning for that, then, hm?” 

“Well, duh. It’s obvious.” He responded, that almost indignant tone of his, rolling his eyes as much as their heavy lids would allow. Jon remembers noting how lovely his eyelashes were, this close. “It’s ‘cos you’re here, love.”

“Oh.” Jon had said, the sentence immediately burying into his mind, forever, into his heart, for even longer. “Thank you, Martin.”

It didn’t come close to what he wanted to say, but it was all he could do - so he followed with the next best thing, reaching up to kiss Martin soft and slow, pulling back just to kiss him a second time. Taking what he could, selfishly, gratefully, drinking in the smile he felt against his lips. When he moved back, the look of love in Martin’s eyes ruined him, again, as it had done a million times before and would undoubtedly do a million times again. Jon welcomed it, the breaking, the ruining, enjoying the feeling of Martin taking a sledgehammer to the walls that tried to build themselves constantly, enjoying that feeling of destruction that he had control over, that benefited him, for once.

“I love you,” he had breathed out, quiet against the sounds of the city, ever present, even from six stories high. “We’ll make it good, Martin.”

“Mhm.” Martin had nodded, smiling. “I love you too, Jon. Now, sleep, for the sake of both of us, please. Want to get back to my dream. Want to figure out what you’re getting me for Christmas.”

“Soothsayer now, are you?” Jon asked, hand still resting on Martin’s cheek, thumb rubbing rhythmic patterns to lull him back to sleep.

“Yeah. You’re not the only one who gets cool eyeball tricks.”

“Okay,” Jon had chuckled, the mention of the Eye not scaring him, for once, not when he had Martin so close. “I’ll remember that.”

Nights like those weren’t uncommon, their own pocket dimension tucked away from time and people and reality, only to be filled with their words, touch, comfort. Nothing else. Jon counts himself as lucky, far too lucky, to have this. Martin is his reassurance, his anchor, his comforting presence - his candle, if he wanted to be metaphorical about it.

It’s easy to want to avoid cliches, but they exist for a reason. They work, and Martin being his light? That works. His own personal candle, shedding enough warmth and light to fight away the darkness, just for the time being.

Jon is, as always, glad to follow him home.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u so much to the wonderful @choose_joy for commissioning this!! it was SO fun to write as a follow up and before s5 i am throwing my domestic fluff out to the world. i love u dearly and ur support means the world 
> 
> if ur interested in commissioning me, or just see me Yell, i am (as always) over at @goldciiffs on twitter!


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